HealthCare.gov Tech Leader is Leaving

The technology leader of the federal agency overseeing HealthCare.gov exchange is out. Tony Trenkle, the CIO of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is leaving for the private sector Nov. 15, according to an email sent to agency employees on Wednesday.

In a letter provided to CIO Journal, CMS COO Michelle Snyder said that Dave Nelson, currently director of the Office of Enterprise Management, will serve as acting CIO upon Mr. Trenkle’s departure. Mr. Nelson will inherit Mr. Trenkle’s $2 billion annual budget for IT. The letter did not mention how the move affects CMS Deputy CIO Henry Chao’s status.

An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Mr. Trenkle was asked to resign, saying he had decided to leave for a job in the private sector.

Comments (2 of 2)

As a healthcare technology executive, I am literally sitting here with my mouth agape. Another site states that Mr. Trenkle resigned, and that his boss, Marilyn Tavenner, was responsible for executing the approval of a "risk acknowledgement", stating that the client (our government) knew that end to end testing wasn't complete, and that because of this, there may be unknown and inherent security risks, and that these risks are understood and accepted. Healthcare organizations are held to amazingly strict standards and face significant penalties for disclosing personal health information outside of HIPAA regulated statutes. How is it, then, that our government can launch a site with ZERO end to end testing, that has significant integration with systems that also carry protected personal information, and expect the public to support this roll-out by using a site that has an unknown number of security risks to enroll in healthcare that it may or may not want?! This is an astounding level of incompetence, and since the "risk acknowledgement" was executed by top level officials, it will be interesting to see what, if anything will be done to hold the contractor accountable.

8:08 am November 7, 2013

Bob wrote:

500 Million for a Website Portal ??? .....Even if integrated to multiple healthcare providers through the highest performance hub or integration network the stated cost is tantamount to fraud and the FBI needs to investigate the primary contractor and the government employees that were to oversee the procurement of this contract. Anyone who signed off on the use of the Primary contractor needs to be carefully looked at. Also, the primary contractor on this effort needs to be banned from performing any future work with the federal government.

We will be watching in the comming months to see exactly what type of action is taken to investigate this: If this was not financial fraud then what was it ?

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